Clasping her long-sought darling to her heart and weeping with delight, the Italian mother was about to follow O'Flarety through the door when Zoie staggered into the room, weak and exhausted.
“You, you!” called the indignant Zoie to the departing mother. “How dare you lock my husband in the bathroom?” She pointed to the key, which the woman still unconsciously clasped in her hand. “Give me that key,” she demanded, “give it to me this instant.”
“Take your horrid old key,” said the mother, and she threw it on the floor. “If you ever try to get my baby again, I'll lock your husband in JAIL,” and murmuring excited maledictions in her native tongue, she took her welcome departure.
Zoie stooped for the key, one hand to her giddy head, but Aggie, who had just returned to the room, reached the key first and volunteered to go to the aid of the captive Alfred, who was pounding desperately on the bathroom door and demanding his instant release.
“I'll let him out,” said Aggie. “You get into bed,” and she slipped quickly from the room.
Utterly exhausted and half blind with fatigue Zoie lifted the coverlet and slipped beneath it. Her first sensation was of touching something rough and scratchy, then came the awful conviction that the thing against which she lay was alive.
Without stopping to investigate the identity of her uninvited bed-fellow, or even daring to look behind her, Zoie fled from the room emitting a series of screams that made all her previous efforts in that direction seem mere baby cries. So completely had Jimmy been enveloped in the coverlets and for so long a time that he had acquired a vague feeling of aloftness toward the rest of his fellows, and had lost all knowledge of their goings and comings. But when his unexpected companion was thrust upon him he was galvanised into sudden action by her scream, and swathed in a large pink comforter, he rolled ignominiously from the upper side of the bed, where he lay on the floor panting and enmeshed, awaiting further developments. Of one thing he was certain, a great deal had transpired since he had sought the friendly solace of the covers and he had no mind to lose so good a friend as the pink comforter. By the time he had summoned sufficient courage to peep from under its edge, a babel of voices was again drawing near, and he hastily drew back in his shell and waited.
Not daring to glance at the scene of her fright, Zoie pushed Aggie before her into the room and demanded that she look in the bed.
Seeing the bed quite empty and noticing nothing unusual in the fact that the pink comforter, along with other covers, had slipped down behind it, Aggie hastened to reassure her terrified friend.
“You imagined it, Zoie,” she declared, “look for yourself.”